Firefox causes massive Xorg CPU usage

[ian marcinkowski]

---
Proposed workaround: use

  Option "AccelMethod" "exa"

in device section of your xorg.conf
----

Since installing Dapper Flight 6 last week, I've been plagued by an extremely slow Firefox, though this problem was not present in my previous Dapper install that had, at one point, been Breezy.

When running top, I've found that Xorg tends to take up 60%+ of the CPU with the remaining percentage being devoted to Firefox, or sometimes vice versa.

This prompted me to edit my xorg.conf.

I found that my default config file listed the Device Driver as 'nv' instead of 'nvidia' as it always had been on my machine before I installed Flight 6.

Reading advice in https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/32561 ( also prompted me to add MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1 to /etc/environment.

I don't report bugs very often, so I'm not sure on the policy of providing a fix for a problem within the main bug report. :P

[W-goesgens-chaosindustries (w-goesgens-chaosindustries)]

Created an attachment (id=205094)
strace log of starting.

it asks if it should import anything, and i say no. then it closes the window, and short arfter it segfaults.

[Timeless-bemail (timeless-bemail)]

usually talkback triggers as a signal handler to report crashes...

[W-goesgens-chaosindustries (w-goesgens-chaosindustries)]

the new debian Sid package comes up stable. maybe this was an interfering between system firefox 1.0.* packages and the localy unpackaged firefox? should this happen? shouldn't firefox primarily take it's own files instead of system files?

[W-goesgens-chaosindustries (w-goesgens-chaosindustries)]

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060226 Debian/1.5.dfsg+1.5.0.1-3 Firefox/1.5.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060226 Debian/1.5.dfsg+1.5.0.1-3 Firefox/1.5.0.1

if i swap focus using sloppy focus betwen firefox and an xterm, cpu usage increases up to 60 or more percent, half for firefox, half for xorg. This situation gets even worse, if there is a bigbrother page displayed. firefox takes up to 90 percent cpu, in xchange with xorg taking everything they get.

Reproducible: Always

Actual Results:
uses too much cpu.

Expected Results:
should use less cpu, as its predessor, firefox 1.* and mozilla did.

[Bugzilla-tecnocode (bugzilla-tecnocode)]

Which version of xorg are you running? GNOME? KDE?

[W-goesgens-chaosindustries (w-goesgens-chaosindustries)]

my window manager is ion 0.7, http://modeemi.fi/~tuomov/ion
ii xorg-common 6.8.2-5.1 X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
ii xserver-xorg 6.9.0.dfsg.1-4 the X.Org X server

is my X-Server.
this is an public readable installation:
https://monitor.rete.toscana.it/

our Monitor has about 15 hosts, with about 10 tests per host.

[Bugzilla-tecnocode (bugzilla-tecnocode)]

Can you try an official Mozilla build and see if you can reproduce it?

[W-goesgens-chaosindustries (w-goesgens-chaosindustries)]

well, with original firefox i've got that problem:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=319236
(gdb) bt
#0 0xb7de6d28 in pthread_mutex_init () from /lib/tls/libpthread.so.0
#1 0xb6aa7243 in __FCDeleteKey () from /<email address hidden>/components/talkback/talkback.so
#2 0xb6a934d1 in ?? () from /<email address hidden>/components/talkback/talkback.so
#3 0xb6a97735 in ?? () from /<email address hidden>/components/talkback/talkback.so
#4 0xb6a9785f in __FCInitialize () from /<email address hidden>/components/talkback/talkback.so
#5 0xb72d15dd in NSGetModule () from /<email address hidden>/components/libqfaservices.so
#6 0xb72d19ca in NSGetModule () from /<email address hidden>/components/libqfaservices.so
#7 0xb72d1a07 in FCInitialize () from /<email address hidden>/components/libqfaservices.so
#8 0xb72d1108 in nsQfaServicesImpl::~nsQfaServicesImpl ()
   from /<email address hidden>/components/libqfaservices.so
#9 0xb72d119a in nsQfaServicesImpl::~nsQfaServicesImpl ()
   from /<email address hidden>/components/libqfaservices.so
#10 0x0851f07c in nsXPTCVariant::Init ()
#11 0x0807a72d in ?? ()
#12 0x08a98008 in ?? ()
#13 0x00000000 in ?? ()
(gdb) quit

[W-goesgens-chaosindustries (w-goesgens-chaosindustries)]

Created an attachment (id=216118)
tar file with the html page saved as, with the icons and stuff.produces same effect as original page.

here's my bb page with all icons. i've seen this take long to render on a gentoo box too.

[ian marcinkowski (ianmarcinkowski)]

Since installing Dapper Flight 6 last week, I've been plagued by an extremely slow Firefox, though this problem was not present in my previous Dapper install that had, at one point, been Breezy.

When running top, I've found that Xorg tends to take up 60%+ of the CPU with the remaining percentage being devoted to Firefox, or sometimes vice versa.

This prompted me to edit my xorg.conf.

I found that my default config file listed the Device Driver as 'nv' instead of 'nvidia' as it always had been on my machine before I installed Flight 6.

Reading advice in <a href="https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/32561/+index">Bug #32561</a> also prompted me to add MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1 to /etc/environment.

I don't report bugs very often, so I'm not sure on the policy of providing a fix for a problem within the main bug report. :P

[Constantine Evans (cevans)]

I believe that the default driver for nvidia cards is nv, not nvidia, due to licence issues with the proprietary nvidia driver. You may want to ask about this on the community forums (for example, at http://www.ubuntu.com/community/forums/document_view).

Also, this isn't a problem with Firefox - you might want to file a bug on nv about the slowness with firefox.

[Berti (bertrand-haut-gmail)]

I've the same problem, launching firefox on some page ( http://www.lesoir.be/ ). The computer slows down, Here is the result of top :
Tasks: 132 total, 2 running, 130 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 90.0% us, 0.3% sy, 0.0% ni, 9.7% id, 0.0% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si
Mem: 1028276k total, 844096k used, 184180k free, 36084k buffers
Swap: 1461904k total, 0k used, 1461904k free, 373752k cached

  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
 5352 root 19 0 204m 26m 4748 R 85.2 2.7 2:57.95 Xorg
 7240 berti 16 0 254m 49m 25m S 2.7 4.9 0:02.95 firefox-bin
 5765 berti 15 0 142m 40m 20m S 2.0 4.0 0:59.21 konqueror

Killing firefox and everything gets back immediatly to the normal situation. I'm using an ati card with the open-source "ati" driver. This is an up-to-date dapper on a AMD64 machine.

[towsonu2003 (towsonu2003)]

this may not be dapper-firefox specific. I'm using swiftfox (firefox compiled for specific archs) and I too see the high cpu usage by xorg from time to time... may be this should be sent upstream to firefox...

[DarkMageZ (darkmagez)]

i can confirm this on both my dapper boxes. one is a p3 @ 667mhz with 128mb sd ram and an intel i810

the other is a amd athlon xp 2100+ 768mb ddr ram & the ati 9600se 128mb using the fglrx driver

it makes firefox feel like it just crashed on the p3, but survivable on the amd.

here's a test example which duplicates for me.

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/BNWT-VINTAGE-50s-CHIC-RED-CIRCLE-SWING-DRESS-UK-14_W0QQitemZ9325213060QQcategoryZ58377QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

scroll down down to the red dress and watch the cpu usage hit the roof

[DarkMageZ (darkmagez)]

this bug has been noticed in ubuntu linux as well. https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/38131

this is a REALLY good test example to replicate this. http://cgi.ebay.com.au/INDIGO-MOON-BEADED-DEVORE-JACKET-BNWT-SIZE-M_W0QQitemZ110004721071QQihZ001QQcategoryZ53367QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

it replicates under ubuntu firefox (1.5.0.4) & offical firefox's 1.5.0.4 & 2.0a3 & trunk (7-7-06)

ubuntu (dapper & edgy) use xorg 7.0 & gnome

[towsonu2003 (towsonu2003)]

that ebay link almost killed my firefox as well... I'm using Zenwalk 2.6 (xfce4)... kernel 2.6.16.16, firefox 1.5.0.4 (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060508 Firefox/1.5.0.4), X Window System Version 6.9.0, PC is a Pentium 3 w. 1.7 Ghz.

(In reply to comment #6)
> this bug has been noticed in ubuntu linux as well.
> https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/38131
>
> this is a REALLY good test example to replicate this.
> http://cgi.ebay.com.au/INDIGO-MOON-BEADED-DEVORE-JACKET-BNWT-SIZE-M_W0QQitemZ110004721071QQihZ001QQcategoryZ53367QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
>
> it replicates under ubuntu firefox (1.5.0.4) & offical firefox's 1.5.0.4 &
> 2.0a3 & trunk (7-7-06)
>
> ubuntu (dapper & edgy) use xorg 7.0 & gnome
>

[DarkMageZ (darkmagez)]

i can confirm this on my edgy testbox & my dapper machine using ubuntu firefox builds & offical firefox builds including 2.0a3 & 3.0 (trunk 7-7-06).

this bug doesn't feel any better under 2.0a3, BUT under 3.0 there were actual noticable improvements AND statistical improvements (from monitoring top).

this bug does feel like the browser has died on slower hardware and ruins the browsing experience under ubuntu. (thanks mum for sending me some great test examples) http://cgi.ebay.com.au/INDIGO-MOON-BEADED-DEVORE-JACKET-BNWT-SIZE-M_W0QQitemZ110004721071QQihZ001QQcategoryZ53367QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
load the site up, and scroll down, xorg cpu usage WILL skyrocket =D and on slower hardware... firefox will feel like it died!

[towsonu2003 (towsonu2003)]

> http://cgi.ebay.com.au/INDIGO-MOON-BEADED-DEVORE-JACKET-BNWT-SIZE-M_W0QQitemZ110004721071QQihZ001QQcategoryZ53367QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

first of all, ouch...

this is an upstream bug for sure, as my firefox (1.5.0.4) almost died on that link and I am using Zenwalk 2.6 on this box.

[Enrico Sardi (enricoss)]

Hi ! I can confirm this bug. I've visited this site "www.html.it" and this is the output of top:

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 4433 root 15 0 138m 57m 10m S 62.3 11.5 27:32.49 Xorg

I use Dapper and firefox 1.5.0.7

Bye

Enrico

[DarkMageZ (darkmagez)]

the situation has improved in firefox 2.0rc2 like it was in firefox trunk. but it could still be alot better. since the cpu usage is in Xorg not firefox... maybe it's an Xorg issue!

[Enrico Sardi (enricoss)]

Hi DarkMageZ !

I've tried with Opera without problem...so I think it's a bug of firefox...

Bye

Enrico

[Mobilitas (mobilitas)]

I've tried with Opera too, with problem. Indeed, ny apps wich need scrolling screen causes massive uses of CPU. I use an Acer Aspire 1350 Series with Athlon XP-M Processor, 1 Gb Ram DDR 2700.
Roger

[David Farning (dfarning)]

Just wanted to confirm that this is still an issue with 2.0

Thanks
David

[Marty (marty-supine)]

Confirming this problem...

Ubuntu Edgy
2.6.17-10-generic #2 SMP Tue Dec 5 21:16:35 UTC 2006 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Context switch from Firefox (both Ubuntu package 2.0.0.1+0dfsg-0ubuntu0.6.10 and Mozilla build 2.0.0.1) to Xterm results in 100% CPU by Xorg (7.1.1ubuntu6.2).

[Marty (marty-supine)]

Confirming this problem...

Edgy
2.6.17-10-generic #2 SMP Tue Dec 5 21:16:35 UTC 2006 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Context switch from Firefox (both Ubuntu package 2.0.0.1+0dfsg-0ubuntu0.6.10 and Mozilla 2.0.0.1) to Xterm results in 100% CPU by Xorg.

[Vinayms (vinayms)]

I have noticed this problem with FC6 and official firefox 2.0.0.1

I disabled "animation of images" using the 'web developer toolbar', and the cpu usage goes down.

Have also noticed that even if the animated background image is "hidden", firefox tries to redraw it over and over again, causing the cursor to flicker when in a textbox/textarea.

[Luka Renko (lure)]

This looks like http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=342105;msg=35

Some people has workaround the issue by using "exa", but this does not work for my HP nw8240 with FireGL V5000 (x700) as it makes whole Xorg slow (moving windows...) with "ati" driver.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

thanks luka, i added the proposed workaround to the summary, so other users can test and report their experience.

[DarkMageZ (darkmagez)]

does anyone have a new testcase? as the one i reported before has been altered to the point of not being useful at all.

[DarkMageZ (darkmagez)]

nomination for new testcase. http://textra.podshow.com/
nowhere near as deadly as the old one. but still effective.

[Turbo (axelhc)]

I just discovered the same: Scrolling some websites ends in almost 100% CPU usage. This is my config:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6)
Gecko/20061201 Firefox/2.0.0.6 (Ubuntu-feisty)
My PC is an Athlon 64 3700 with 1024MB RAM and an ATI X1950XT vid card.

So far I have ALL the updates in Feisty, so my guess goes by the side of Firefox. I also tried with Opera but the slowness is not so awful. This is true for the "textra" page wich is even worse than the one I discovered.

Any final idea about why is this happening ???.

Regards.

Turbo.
;-)

[ryanmbruce (ryanmbruce)]

I can also confirm on http://textra.podshow.com/

100% cpu usage while loading the page, and 100% while scrolling.

Option "AccelMethod" "exa"
in xorg.conf does not help.

Feisty w/ current updates
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20061201 Firefox/2.0.0.6 (Ubuntu-feisty)
ATI Radeon (the original)

Let me know if you want more info.

[Eemil Lagerspetz (eemil-lagerspetz)]

Interestingly enough, AccelMethod "exa" causes this on my laptop.
The laptop is a Pentium 4 2.8Ghz with 1G memory and an ATI Radeon Mobility 9000 (R250) sharing the main memory.
However, AccelMethod "XAA" and having RenderAccel "true" fixes it.
exa was faster on Edgy.

I hope this helps someone.
I will attach my fairly tweaked xorg.conf.

[Sylvestre Mergulhão (mergulhao83)]

I can also confirm on http://textra.podshow.com/

None workaround works for me. I'm using ubuntu gutsy with latest updates.

Using proprietary nvidia drivers.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

On Sat, Dec 29, 2007 at 02:31:31PM -0000, Sylvestre Mergulhão wrote:
> I can also confirm on http://textra.podshow.com/
>
> None workaround works for me. I'm using ubuntu gutsy with latest
> updates.
>
> Using proprietary nvidia drivers.
>

please try to run firefox without pango. start firefox from a command
line like:

export MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1
firefox

Thanks,

 - Alexander

[DarkMageZ (darkmagez)]

disabling pango has almost no effect on this issue. please do try to look at an issue before commenting asac.

[McGiver (newsletter-digitalhalo)]

I have the same problem. (with Sidux (Debian Sid Distro), my graphics card is an Intel X3100 (Intel GM965) using xserver-xorg-intel and mesa)

Xorg cpu usage skyrockets while firefox is rendering a page, or while entering text in the addressbar for example.
Maybe this is a gtk problem not a firefox problem at all, also I downgraded to an earlier Version of gtk (and libgtk*). Other gtk programs seem to increase xorg cpuload too, but firefox is worst by far.

Changing the AccelMethod to eaa or exa didn't work, neither did disabling pango

Regards
McG aka Roland

[McGiver (newsletter-digitalhalo)]

Turns out this was/is a problem with a new version of xserver-xorg-video-intel.
The problem disappears when using vesa driver or downgrading to an older version of xserver-xorg-video-intel.

For anyone interested: I have an Intel X3100 (GM965) and
xserver-xorg-video-intel Version 2:2.2.0-1 does not work (problem description see post above)
xserver-xorg-video-intel Version 2:2.1.1-4 does work

[Erik (echakr)]

Xorg does not just hog CPU while firefox is rendering a page (this would be understandable), but even when firefox is quietly waiting for data, for example if the wireless connection has dropped out, firefox is sitting using about 5% CPU waiting for data, but Xorg is eating 40% - why?

At least with the new version, firefox itself doesn't hog so much CPU time while waiting for data from the network interface.

Ubuntu 7.10 (PPC) Apple PowerBook G4 ATI rv350 FOSS xorg driver - Firefox 3.0

[Erik (echakr)]

Just to add - the CPU usage is reduced to normal if firefox is minimised, or you click the stop button. Xorg is probably just crapping itself trying to render those stupid little animated rotating icons on the tab title bars.

[Stargazers (aleksi-rasanen-deactivatedaccount)]

I have same kind of problem with Opera and Konqueror. Firefox also, but it makes Xorg return back to normal CPU usage much faster. For example Fluxubuntu page (www.fluxubuntu.org) makes my Xorg use CPU 100%. It doesn't matter which browser I use (at least if it is Opera, Konqueror or Firefox). I am using driver "nv".

[W-goesgens-chaosindustries (w-goesgens-chaosindustries)]

the problem still is here with debian sid.
meanwhile i flushed an reconstructed my profile.
The SID iceweasel runs flawlessly.
does the firefox shellwrapper set LD_LIBRARY_PATH's?

[Timeless-bemail (timeless-bemail)]

thanks, that's actually useful. you could just delete /<email address hidden>/components/talkback/talkback.so if you want to work around this.

The problem is visible here:
open("/dev/zero", O_RDWR) = -1 EACCES (Permission denied)
mmap2(NULL, 1056768, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE, -1, 0) = -1 EBADF (Bad file descriptor)
close(-1) = -1 EBADF (Bad file descriptor)
--- SIGSEGV (Segmentation fault) @ 0 (0) ---

timeless@boffo:/tmp$ ls -al /dev/zero
crw-rw-rw- 1 root sys 1, 5 1994-07-17 16:46 /dev/zero

I have no idea why your /dev/zero is not writable but i'm fairly certain that's the problem (i'd love confirmation).

[Timeless-bemail (timeless-bemail)]

anyway, java and mplayer have code to recognize such misconfigured systems. our code is of course not perfect (it should handle your misconfigured system with a bit more grace), but you should really fix your system.

[W-goesgens-chaosindustries (w-goesgens-chaosindustries)]

hm, yes, you're right:
crw-rw---- 1 root root 1, 5 Mar 2 20:11 /dev/zero
but..
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)

shouldn't that be done by bootscripts?

its public writable on my other systems though...
exiting with an error would indeed be a bit more polite than just segfaulting...

A bug squishing facility shouldn't introduce crashes imho ;-)

[Timeless-bemail (timeless-bemail)]

as it happens, talkback is end of lifed, so it doesn't matter much. you can simply install a minefield nightly and experience breakpad. this bug may or may not be fixed depending on whether or not an engineer is assigned to work on it.

[aditya (inkahmessiah)]

everyone is confirming the problem..but i need the solution guys..
i cant bear see my firefox lock down everytime i get on hi5!!!

for me..its using my 800 ram and 753 swap fully..i cant do anything..i process all are sleeping like..none use mush memory is shown there..well
i never got this problem on kde..its on gnome only..

[Geoff Cutter (geoff-cutter)]

Adding this comment since I am a KDE user. My "top" command gives:

  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
top - 11:24:45 up 1 day, 14:08, 4 users, load average: 6.85, 4.11, 2.64
Tasks: 149 total, 1 running, 142 sleeping, 0 stopped, 6 zombie
top - 11:24:53 up 1 day, 14:08, 4 users, load average: 7.54, 4.35, 2.73
Tasks: 151 total, 6 running, 137 sleeping, 0 stopped, 8 zombie
Cpu(s): 56.3%us, 3.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 40.1%id, 0.7%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 1035744k total, 1002776k used, 32968k free, 88276k buffers
Swap: 2104472k total, 135444k used, 1969028k free, 382228k cached

  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
 3627 root 16 0 233m 106m 5132 R 51.2 10.5 257:59.17 Xorg
 4254 gcutter 18 0 34244 17m 13m R 2.0 1.7 30:30.37 kded
 7734 gcutter 15 0 74968 20m 16m S 1.7 2.0 1:18.10 ksysguard
11384 gcutter 15 0 115m 42m 25m S 1.0 4.2 9:47.84 konqueror
 7738 gcutter 15 0 4028 1780 1140 S 1.0 0.2 0:58.60 ksysguardd
 3282 root 18 0 1828 572 552 S 0.3 0.1 0:16.68 hald-addon-stor
 4328 gcutter 15 0 77188 19m 15m R 0.3 1.9 0:01.82 konsole
21232 gcutter 15 0 185m 49m 30m R 0.3 4.9 2:39.65 amarokapp
 1437 gcutter 15 0 403m 124m 29m R 0.3 12.3 22:03.30 firefox-bin
 7532 gcutter 15 0 84308 27m 19m S 0.3 2.7 0:04.76 kbilliards
22453 gcutter 15 0 2376 1188 856 R 0.3 0.1 0:00.02 top
    1 root 15 0 740 160 120 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.91 init
    2 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
    3 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.14 ksoftirqd/0

2008-03-28 Friday 11:24:56 >uname -a
Linux linux-skhf 2.6.18.8-0.7-default #1 SMP Tue Oct 2 17:21:08 UTC 2007 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

[Geoff Cutter (geoff-cutter)]

Xorg CPU 50% to 30% after removing kbilliards

  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
 3627 root 15 0 235m 107m 5172 S 29.9 10.7 284:01.80 Xorg
 1437 gcutter 15 0 405m 127m 29m R 4.0 12.6 23:15.71 firefox-bin
 4254 gcutter 15 0 34800 17m 13m S 2.0 1.8 31:37.39 kded
11384 gcutter 15 0 115m 42m 25m S 1.3 4.2 10:23.06 konqueror
 7734 gcutter 16 0 74968 20m 16m S 1.3 2.0 2:16.05 ksysguard
 7738 gcutter 15 0 4028 1780 1140 S 1.3 0.2 1:44.31 ksysguardd
21232 gcutter 15 0 185m 49m 30m S 0.3 4.9 2:46.33 amarokapp
31192 gcutter 15 0 129m 39m 27m S 0.3 3.9 0:09.47 konqueror
    1 root 15 0 740 160 120 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.91 init
    2 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0

[Robert (robrwo)]

Similar problem. Firefox 3b5 causes CPU usage to go to 100% for extended periods time. I'm using Intel video card.

Doesn't seem to be related to specific websites, although I've had the same problem sometimes with Firefox 2 for the same sites. I've also had the same problem with about:blank and trying to see which AddOns might be causing it. I ran "firefox --safemode" and disabled extensions, but the problem kept occurring.

I've had to use Firefox 2 to file this bug report.

[Robert (robrwo)]

I'll add that I consider this very important. Firefox 3 has become unusable.

[another_sam (anothersam)]

I suffer this bug too.

But only on certain websites. Even so, too frequently, and it becomes too discouraging.

A website where it happens: Spanish Wikipedia
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portada
Loading itself and anything you try becomes exasperating. Including hovering a link and changing the window size.
In this case, seems like if any time the page needs to be re-rendered, some tedious process would be needed to get accomplished.

A website where it DOES NOT happen: English Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
In this case, all works right.

My system:
Ubuntu 8.04 beta. ATI Mobility Radeon X1400. Default drivers. Screen at 1920x1200.

[another_sam (anothersam)]

Can you all test your problematic pages again? I think the issue has been almost resolved. At least in my case. Now, Spanish wikipedia resizes apparently as fast as English does. The only difference I can perceive now is on clicking once over plain text and dragging the mouse quickly up and down. In English wikipedia the text gets selected instantly but in Spanish wikipedia a bit of delay is still perceptible.

[Robert (robrwo)]

I don't have specific problematic pages. The problem either occurs (inconsistently, as far as I can tell) when I first start Firefox, or sometime while using it and viewing pages (even pages that don't seem to have any JavaScript).

[Gergely Janossy (marcabru)]

Samuel ( https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/38131/comments/33 ):

I can confirm this bug on Ubuntu 7.10 with firefox 3 beta 5 (installed from mozilla.com tarball).

en.wikipedia.org pages --> ok
es.wikipedia.org pages --> sluggish performance, hovering _any_ link causes 1 sec delay (no mouse moving, no keyboard input, but background music keeps playing)

I can add that this behaviour can be disabled by disabling css styles (view-->page styles --> none)

(Via onboard graphics chipset, with "via" driver.)

[Gergely Janossy (marcabru)]

and it seems to be independent of the graphic driver because:

* I have the exact same error as samuel with a very different graphics board Radeon <-> VIA Unichrome
* The error comes in spanish wikipedia but not in english.

Is this a FF 3 error?

[Spoonman (dr-terisch)]

I also expirience this bug, my hardware:
PIII 700mhz
630mb ram
3DFX Voodoo 3 3000 (driver tdfx)

Option "AccelMethod" "exa" in xorg.conf does not do much, but there is small improvement.

[Spoonman (dr-terisch)]

sorry, forgot to mention system is ubuntu 8.04 (updated from 7.10 using update mgr

[Joel (yoeldk)]

i can confirm this bug on kubuntu 8.04.
some websites causes firefox (either 2.0 or 3 beta) and xorg to use massive amount of CPU.
(firefox CPU usage may go beyond 90% on these sites, and my box is Pentium D 3.2Ghz with 2 GB RAM).

examples for these sites:

www.ynet.co.il

http://www.keshet-tv.com/nehederet/

[another_sam (anothersam)]

These sites have a lot of JavaScript inside. Try to install NoScript (
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722 ) and measure the CPU
usage again. Both sites works well for me with and without JavaScript
execution allowed.

I had this bug previosly but not now. Update your system. What is your
graphics card? Have you installed some particular driver?

(Excuse the array of orders and questions! XD)

Joel wrote:
> i can confirm this bug on kubuntu 8.04.
> some websites causes firefox (either 2.0 or 3 beta) and xorg to use massive amount of CPU.
> (firefox CPU usage may go beyond 90% on these sites, and my box is Pentium D 3.2Ghz with 2 GB RAM).
>
> examples for these sites:
>
> www.ynet.co.il
>
> http://www.keshet-tv.com/nehederet/
>
>

[Joel (yoeldk)]

once i installed NoScript the CPU usage remained low on the above sites i mentioned, which means the bug is caused by these java scripts.

my graphics card is geforce 6600 LE.
i have installed the nvidia-glx-new drivers (also tried with nvidia-glx).
i have compiz-fusion running and it goes smooth with no problems.
the CPU usage problem occurs with or without compiz-fusion running, and this problem does not reproduce
when i use Opera browser on these sites.

[another_sam (anothersam)]

OK!

So if what eats a lot of CPU is Xorg, your bug could still being on
Xorg, I think.

But instead, if what eats a lot of CPU is Firefox, the bug would be on
Firefox and would be not related to Xorg.

Well, actually I have no idea of what your problem is, but I think the
effect of installing NoScript is quite relevant and should be useful for
experts to know.

Regards

Joel wrote:
> once i installed NoScript the CPU usage remained low on the above sites
> i mentioned, which means the bug is caused by these java scripts.
>
> my graphics card is geforce 6600 LE.
> i have installed the nvidia-glx-new drivers (also tried with nvidia-glx).
> i have compiz-fusion running and it goes smooth with no problems.
> the CPU usage problem occurs with or without compiz-fusion running, and this problem does not reproduce
> when i use Opera browser on these sites.
>
>

[ryanmbruce (ryanmbruce)]

From the looks of it, this should be confirmed.

There are a number of example pages on the ubuntu bug for this problem, though I'm pretty certain not all of those people are experiencing the same problem.

[Robert (robrwo)]

Firefox 3 often uses 100% CPU when starting up on a blank page. So I don't
think this has anything to do with JavaScript or particular websites.

[ryanmbruce (ryanmbruce)]

This bug is a bit older than FF3.

Everyone should also remember that there is a difference between Xorg using 100% of the cpu and Firefox using 100%.

Also, have there been any developers working on or looking at this problem? Maybe we should be focusing more on bugzilla.mozilla to get this fixed?

Cheers,
-Ryan

[Joel (yoeldk)]

Of course there's a difference, ryanmbruce.

The thing is that both Xorg and firefox CPU usage dramatically rise when i go to some sites, and it stays this way even after the webpage finishes to load.
For example, while being in this site and writing this post, both firefox and Xorg CPU usage is below 1%.

When i go to http://www.keshet-tv.com/nehederet/ , firefox CPU usage rises to more than 85%, and Xorg usage rises to ~10% and it stays this way even after the page finishes to load. (actually it stays this way until i leave the webpage) . Keep in mind that each one of them was below 1%.

I guess Xorg and firefox CPU usage are somehow related, especially when there are sites loaded with javascript/videos.

Try going to the mentioned site yourself and check your CPU usage.

I agree that maybe this bug should also be opened in bugzilla.mozilla, i'll check if theres's an open bug.

Thanks,

Joel

[Joel (yoeldk)]

actually there is one that looks related -

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=142994

[ryanmbruce (ryanmbruce)]

This bug has already been linked to one relevant mozilla bug. If you
take a look at the top of this page, it's the link to bugzilla. I
can't check to see if yours is the same one right now (mobile client),
but if you think it's the same problem, link the bugs together.

Cheers,
-Ryan

On 5/9/08, Joel <email address hidden> wrote:
> actually there is one that looks related -
>
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=142994
>
> --
> Firefox causes massive Xorg CPU usage
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/38131
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com

[Tom Chiverton (bugs-launchpad-net-falkensweb)]

I saw this using http://www.formula1.com/services/live_timing/live_timing_popup.html as a test case (Java applet, it will load even if there isn't a race on).

I have a Dell Inspiton 1525, intel Mobile GM965/GL960 graphics card using the 'intel' driver. Kbuntu 8.04.

Looking at /var/log/Xorg.0.log, I was already using 'exa' (by default).
Changing to 'xaa' (with RenderAccel) solved this problem for me, and Compiz etc. seems uneffected.

Bad default in the X config ?

[Nigel Ridley (nigel-rmk)]

Kubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04
Dell Inspiron 1525 Intel graphics (x3100)
Both Firefox 3 Beta 5 and Firefox 2 are affected.

I managed to get Firefox behaving by installing the 'Adblock Plus' extension and blocking most of the 'Flash' ads.
http://www.ynetnews.com/ was terrible - just loading the page would cause massive cpu cycles and the stepping on the dual-core to jump to 2001 cpu's. It would then settle down to 800 cpu's and then up to 2001 cpu's again. This would happen constantly whilst viewing said web page. If I attempted to scroll the page a few times at a go, then Firefox would stop responding for a while.

My understanding is that sites that have several 'Flash' ads or content cause the problem. It's not 'Flash' of itself, I have no problem viewing 'youtube' videos, it's just multiple 'Flash' content that causes the problem.

[Tom Chiverton (bugs-launchpad-net-falkensweb)]

I wasn't getting this problem with Flash content - that URL is fine, for instance, but just Java applets that would take >5 minutes to load.

I think Something Is Up somewhere, and both Flash and Java can trigger it.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

On Sun, May 25, 2008 at 02:20:28PM -0000, Tom Chiverton wrote:
> I saw this using
> http://www.formula1.com/services/live_timing/live_timing_popup.html as a
> test case (Java applet, it will load even if there isn't a race on).
>
> I have a Dell Inspiton 1525, intel Mobile GM965/GL960 graphics card
> using the 'intel' driver. Kbuntu 8.04.
>
> Looking at /var/log/Xorg.0.log, I was already using 'exa' (by default).
> Changing to 'xaa' (with RenderAccel) solved this problem for me, and Compiz etc. seems uneffected.
>
> Bad default in the X config ?
>

If this is with firefox 3 in hardy, could you pleaes open a new bug
against "firefox-3.0" package? You can use the Help -> Report a
problem menu entry, which should be available in default hardy installs.

 - Alexander

[Tom Chiverton (bugs-launchpad-net-falkensweb)]

@Alexander:
Done: #238629

[vashee (bshahbaz)]

 first noticed this bug when I tried to go to the apple store web site recently after enabling my nvidia driver to get some compiz fusion effects enabled.
After disabling the driver and reverting back to the default nv driver, I no longer have this issue. I still get large CPU usage by npviewer.bin when viewing flash content, especially youtube stuff in full screen mode. Sometimes it takes a while before I get a context switch to let me out of full screen.

I'm using 8.04 with the 2.6.24-19 kernel and Firefox 3.0

[vashee (bshahbaz)]

I should clarify that using the nvidia driver caused xorg to spike to 100% cpu usage on the troublesome pages. Switching back to the nv driver seems to have fixed that problem.

[Robert (robrwo)]

I confirm this bug for Ubuntu Hardy and Fedora 9.

When starting up, or sometimes changing tabs or loading certain pages with Javascript, Firefox 3 takes up 100% of the CPU it's running on, and won't respond to anything else (keyboard, mouse, screen updates).

[Brendan Ribera (abscondment)]

I have an additional data point to add. My setup is:

 * Ubuntu 8.04
 * AMD64
 * 2.6.24-19-generic
 * Firefox 3.01 (Mozilla distribution, not Ubuntu)
 * Nvidia driver 169.12
 * Flash 10 beta

This problem manifested itself most noticeably on Facebook's new redesign (new.facebook.com):
  * During page load, both Xorg and Firefox would spike to ~50% CPU used each.
  * Once the page finished loading, Xorg would eat up ~86% of CPU time and Firefox would consume ~10%.

I downgraded to Flash 9 and marked a dramatic improvement:
  * During page load, both still hit ~50% each.
  * After page load, Xorg dropped to ~15-25% CPU, Firefox stayed at ~10%.

I understand that people have seen this problem without Flash being in the mix at all (i.e. with Java applets); nevertheless, it could help in finding the problem to see that Flash version can be a switch to toggle it on and off in a certain circumstance.

It is likely that the way Flash 10 interacts with Firefox hits a very different (buggy) codepath than the Flash 9 interaction. This theory is further supported by the new additions to Flash 10: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/releasenotes.html#features -- nearly all of these changes are related to *graphics* and would likely interface with Xorg in a different manner.

[Florian Hopfmüller (fhopfmueller)]

i can confirm brendan's report about new.facebook.com. i have the same problem with the old www.facebook.com too.
my setup:
Ubuntu 8.10
intel dualcore
2.6.27-2-generic
firefox 3.01 from synaptic
nvidia-driver 173
shockwave flash 10.0.0 d525
(synaptic backports enabled)
once facebook is loaded one processor core hits 100% and stays there. X uses about 90%. the problem only occurs when facebook is in the active tab.

[Robert (robrwo)]

This problem seems to be getting worse for me, and often when just starting
Firefox (without even loading a website, although it's possible that it's
trying to read some RSS feeds).

I'm at the point of downgrading back to Firefox 2 again.

[markb (mark-blakeney)]

I'd like to confirm what Eemil Lagerspetz says above in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/38131/comments/19. My Dell Inspiron 640m laptop (945GM) exhibits this problem running Hardy with the default xorg configuration having AccelMethod = exa. However the problem disappears by setting AccelMethod = XAA and RenderAccel = true. I'm probably losing some graphics performance with this but it's certainly worth avoiding this bug which otherwise incapacitates my machine.

[Shawn vega (svega85-gmail)]

ok i think i have a fix for the people who are using flash player 10 beta. to test if it will work for you go to a site that causes the bug for you then click Tools > Add-ons scroll down to shockwave flash and click disable, if the site starts working faster then the problem is that you are useing an older version of flash 10 beta.
I believe this is the same as bug #113184 in the older flash 10 beta using the newer prerelease it seemes to work fine but you have to download it to from the flash site http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html the one in the intrepid repo is bad.
if your using hardy then downgrading back to flash 9 may be easier.

[markb (mark-blakeney)]

Scratch what I wrote above in https://bugs.launchpad.net/firefox/+bug/38131/comments/59. This bug occurs for me with AccelMethod = XAA or with it set to EXA. :(

Also, I don't think this bug is flash related. It occurs with both flashplugin-nonfree 9 and 10 for me.

[lilbudda (cory-meisch-gmail)]

I can confirm that disabling shockwave flash fixes the slowness issue that I also experienced with facebook.

[markb (mark-blakeney)]

I can confirm that disabling shockware flash does not change this problem at all for me. After starting Firefox one or more times, xorg will eventually run flat out and my machine slows down to become nearly unusable. Also, restarting the machine in this state takes ages as it waits for X to shutdown.

[Shawn vega (svega85-gmail)]

well i just did a clean install of hardy beta and i no longer have this issue with or with out flash

[chris05atm (chris-doe-deactivatedaccount)]

Did an upgrade one night and all of a sudden Firefox stopped pegging the CPU.

chris@chris-desktop:~/j3d-1_5_2-linux-i586/lib/i386$ uname -a
Linux chris-desktop 2.6.24-19-generic #1 SMP Wed Aug 20 22:56:21 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

Firefox 3.0.3.

Wish I could explain what changed but apparently something was modified and this behavior ended immediately post auto-update.

[Robert (robrwo)]

Disabling or removing flash does not fix this for me either.

[Martel (martel)]

The problem is not related to exa or xaa rendering. I'm using XAA and I'm on Intrepid and a decent enough hardware - AthlonXP 2200+, 2 GB Ram and NVidia GF 6600 GT. See the screenshot - it's captured at almost zero activity.

Some more data - my Xorg video config.

Section "Device"
 Identifier "GeForce 6600 GT"
 Busid "PCI:1:0:0"
 Driver "nvidia"
 Option "AddARGBVisuals" "True"
 Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
 Option "NoLogo" "True"
 Option "PixmapCacheSize" "1000000"
 Option "AllowSHMPixmaps" "0"
 Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"
 Option "RenderAccel" "true"
 Option "EnablePageFlip" "true"
EndSection

If you need any additional info please let me know. But please be as verbose as you can as I don't really understand the technical babble like "attach to the Xorg process (...) and look at backtraces".

[Martel (martel)]

Oh, and one more thing - exiting Firefox gets Xorg load to ~2%. My Firefox has java (not javascript) disabled, btw.

[Martel (martel)]

After firefox restart it returns back to normal _for a while_. See the screenshot.

[ryanmbruce (ryanmbruce)]

Whenever I disable javascript, this problem entirely disappears (though the
resultant intertubes are crappy). Can people try to reproduce with the
above pages while javascript is disabled?

Thanks,
-Ryan

On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 7:43 AM, Martel <email address hidden> wrote:

> After firefox restart it returns back to normal _for a while_. See the
> screenshot.
>
> ** Attachment added: "Xorg / Top after firefox restart"
> http://launchpadlibrarian.net/19564260/xorg-after-firefox-restart.png
>
> --
> Firefox causes massive Xorg CPU usage
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/38131
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[ryanmbruce (ryanmbruce)]

Btw, I'm now on a fresh wubi install of Intrepid. With all the latest
updates.

-Ryan

[Martel (martel)]

> Can people try to reproduce with the above pages while javascript is disabled?

When on http://tech.mevio.com/ it's active scrolling that gets Xorg to use lots of CPU.

But I'm not sure if it's related to firefox alone. I think I have observed the same behaviour with thunderbird. So it's more like Mozilla's framework and Xorg that aren't playing nice with each other.

[markb (mark-blakeney)]

With regards to my comments above in this bug, I have found my problem. Not sure whether/if this applies to anybody else. I discovered that it is not only Firefox which induces xorg into this crazy cpu state. Xorg would eventually get that way even if I never started firefox, it would just take longer to get there. It seems firefox pushes xorg into this state quicker. Once xorg starts hammering the cpu, then it would not recover no matter what I did. It would not respond to a ctrl-alt-backspace and even shutting the machine down would take ages. The odd thing for me is that I also noticed that this problem only happened at my work where I used my laptop often, it did not seem to happen when I used the laptop at home (I initially suspected some kind of weird DNS interaction).

The problem turned out to be due to my optical mouse. I don't use a mousepad and the particular light pine looking table surface at work caused the optical mouse to hammer xorg. As soon as I pull the usb mouse out, xorg drops back to normal. This problem does not happen any other place I use the same mouse, including at another desk that looks exactly the same to my eye. So simply by using a mousepad now at the offending desk, my xorg cpu problem is solved.

[Clayton Dillard (claytondillard)]

Nah, removing my optical mouse doesn't do the trick Mark.

This needs to be resolved because it sucks! I've installed the latest Flash from Adobe and removed the flashplugin-nonfree from the Intrepid repo but that didn't help either.

Firefox is a pretty heavily used app so what's taking so long for this to get fixed?

[Clayton Dillard (claytondillard)]

Ok, Mark, I have to give you kudos on this one after all. Unplugging my Logitech optical mouse did not fix it until I upgraded to the latest version of Flash from the Intrepid repos.

Here's what I did:
1. Remove flash-nonfree
2. Install Adobe Flash Player from Adobe's download site
3. Tested a site known to drive up my CPU and it still did
4. Update manager notified me that I needed to upgrade Flash so I did
5. Tested a site known to drive up my CPU and it sill did
6. Unplugged mouse and CPU use dropped right away. No problems since.

Wow! Not sure yet why removing my mouse helps but Mark, thanks a ton!!

Ubuntu 8.10
HP 8510w
Nvidia Quadro
Compiz
Gnome
3GB RAM
Logitech TrackMan Wheel mouse

[Matt Wagantall (mwagantall)]

Finally, I've found a solution that works for me: updating my proprietary NVidia drivers to the latest beta release (180.06) .

For those interested, you can get them here:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=123072

While this behaviour was most noticeable Firefox for me, I had encountered it in other X applications as well and suspected a driver issue. KDE 4.1 seems to be running smoothly for me now too. Hopefully this solves it for others as well.

I'm running a 64-bit kernel and my video card is a Quadro FX 570M.

Matt

[krom (krom)]

Installing latest nvidia drivers solved problem for me too

[Robert (robrwo)]

I don't have an nvidia card. Instead I have "Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c)" (via lspci).

[Geoff Cutter (geoff-cutter)]

> Firefox causes massive Xorg CPU usage
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/38131

I was using Opera and got 100% CPU usage, closed a page and it
recoved. Opened the same page and got a higher usage but not 100%.

Firefox was not running at the time.

SUSE 10.2

I have a screen capture if anyone wants it.

regds Geoff
Melbourne, Australia
www.cutter.id.au
http://www.pgdp.net/c/ 11,000 pages done!

[alzekak (alzekak)]

Had the same issue on 8.10 for a while now. Solved it after:

- Removing all unneeded FF addons (only kept NoScript for the time being)
- Updating my nvidia drivers to 180.11 from (manually removing all remains of nvidia before updating)

Noticeable difference after that not only while using FF but with System Monitor which would use tons of CPU to run.
Scrolling on some sites remains slow but they were as slow even when I was using FF on Windows or Chrome or Safari... so it's a general issue.

[Clayton Dillard (claytondillard)]

This has been solved for me by installing Nvidia 180.25. I have a
Quadro FX570 on an HP 8510w notebook. Suspend/resume works, no
sluggishness or other issues with Flash sites and no more CPU maxing
either.

On Tue, 2009-02-03 at 15:42 +0000, alzekak wrote:

> Had the same issue on 8.10 for a while now. Solved it after:
>
> - Removing all unneeded FF addons (only kept NoScript for the time being)
> - Updating my nvidia drivers to 180.11 from (manually removing all remains of nvidia before updating)
>
> Noticeable difference after that not only while using FF but with System Monitor which would use tons of CPU to run.
> Scrolling on some sites remains slow but they were as slow even when I was using FF on Windows or Chrome or Safari... so it's a general issue.
>

[buccaneere (cwb1one)]

With FF closed, and system monitor on 'Processes' (ALL), Xorg is at 2- 5% CPU usage. Changing system monitor display to 'Resources' makes the CPU usage peg - 85 - 100% usage. Then go back to 'Processes', and Xorg drops within a moment from pegged, to 2 - 5% usage.

I don't at all believe it's a FF gig...

[buccaneere (cwb1one)]

I changed the update interval for 'Resources' in System Monitor. Immediately as I changed from 1 second interval to 2 second, CPU dropped from near 100% to 50%. I increased the 'Processes' update interval to 3 seconds, and the CPU is now just under 20%.

I closed the settings window, then went to processes (from 'resources'), and it went back to 2 - 5 %. And again back to 'resources', and it went to 20% steady.

Does this auto-monitor process continue when system monitor is NOT displayed?

Does PCLinux do this operation? Display processes seem to be MUCH faster when booted in PCLOS...

[Christopher Giroir (kelsin)]

I hate an issue in Debian Lenny that sounds a lot like this, just wanted to comment that AccelMethod "XAA" in my device section solved it for me.

I was having VERY slow rendering times in Firefox. Switching tabs would take forever. My computer did not feel like it should.

I'm on a Thinkpad X61s with lspci graphics card line:
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c)

My xorg.conf is largely autoconfigure (except for one Keyboard options line to replace caps lock with control). I ONLY added the AccelMethod "XAA" line to my device section to get this:

Section "Device"
        Identifier "Configured Video Device"
        Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"
EndSection

And suddenly firefox is incredibly fast again. In fact, I didn't notice this before but ALL GTK apps were slow and they are all faster. I think this might technically be an xorg auto config problem?

I also think a lot of the problems in this bug report might not be for the same actual bug.

[ryanmbruce (ryanmbruce)]

I definitely agree with Christopher that this bug has become a sort of
basket case where all problems having to do with poor performance are
placed. It appears that there are at least 5-6 potentially separate
problems all together in here.

I also haven't heard from anyone claiming to be a developer/maintainer
in a very long time. Too long.

We need to focus this bug, and get some valuable input from
development. Suggestions?

-Ryan

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 9:49 AM, Christopher Giroir <email address hidden> wrote:
> I hate an issue in Debian Lenny that sounds a lot like this, just wanted
> to comment that AccelMethod "XAA" in my device section solved it for me.
>
> I was having VERY slow rendering times in Firefox. Switching tabs would
> take forever. My computer did not feel like it should.
>
> I'm on a Thinkpad X61s with lspci graphics card line:
> 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c)
>
> My xorg.conf is largely autoconfigure (except for one Keyboard options
> line to replace caps lock with control). I ONLY added the AccelMethod
> "XAA" line to my device section to get this:
>
> Section "Device"
> Identifier "Configured Video Device"
> Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"
> EndSection
>
> And suddenly firefox is incredibly fast again. In fact, I didn't notice
> this before but ALL GTK apps were slow and they are all faster. I think
> this might technically be an xorg auto config problem?
>
> I also think a lot of the problems in this bug report might not be for
> the same actual bug.
>
> --
> Firefox causes massive Xorg CPU usage
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/38131
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[Robert (robrwo)]

Agreed. First thing to do is get someone from Firefox team to lok at this
bug, or at least have a set of Firefox bugs (from bugzilla.mozilla.org) for
users to look at.

On 24/02/09 17:37 ryanmbruce wrote:
> I definitely agree with Christopher that this bug has become a sort of
> basket case where all problems having to do with poor performance are
> placed. It appears that there are at least 5-6 potentially separate
> problems all together in here.
>
> I also haven't heard from anyone claiming to be a developer/maintainer
> in a very long time. Too long.
>
> We need to focus this bug, and get some valuable input from
> development. Suggestions?
>
> -Ryan

[jhonathan (jhonathan)]

  I know that this can sound stupid, but when I switch to theme different that iFox, cpu hog was gone.

  Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.6) Gecko/2009020409 Iceweasel/3.0.6 (Debian-3.0.6-1)

X.Org X Server 1.4.2
Release Date: 11 June 2008
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: Linux Debian (xorg-server 2:1.4.2-10)

[Robert (robrwo)]

On 24/02/09 15:49 Christopher Giroir wrote:
> I hate an issue in Debian Lenny that sounds a lot like this, just wanted
> to comment that AccelMethod "XAA" in my device section solved it for me.

FYI, I am running Lenny on a Powermac G4. Firefox does not have this issue
normally.

But (interestingly enough) if I try to import my bookmarks (which date back
to my Netscape 1.x bookmarks from about 1994), then it has the same problem.
Alas, removing the bookmarks on my ThinkPad R61i does not seem to fix the
problem. It needs more fiddling to see what's going on, but still, it makes
me wonder if that is the cause....

> I was having VERY slow rendering times in Firefox. Switching tabs would
> take forever. My computer did not feel like it should.
>
> I'm on a Thinkpad X61s with lspci graphics card line:
> 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c)

I have a similar machine....

> My xorg.conf is largely autoconfigure (except for one Keyboard options
> line to replace caps lock with control). I ONLY added the AccelMethod
> "XAA" line to my device section to get this:
>
> Section "Device"
> Identifier "Configured Video Device"
> Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"
> EndSection
>
> And suddenly firefox is incredibly fast again. In fact, I didn't notice
> this before but ALL GTK apps were slow and they are all faster. I think
> this might technically be an xorg auto config problem?

Doesn't fix the problem for me.

> I also think a lot of the problems in this bug report might not be for
> the same actual bug.

I agree.

[Robert (robrwo)]

This really needs to be made a higher priority. After the latest xorg
updates on Intrepid, Firefox is crashing for several minutes at as time.
It's become unusable.

[Clayton Dillard (claytondillard)]

Not sure what all the fuss is anymore. I'm running Intrepid on an HP
8510w notebook that has an Nvidia Quadro FX570M. I Installed the 180.25
driver from Nvidia and all of my issues with Firefox + Flash went away,
I still get reliable Suspend/Resume and Hibernate.

Robert, what's your hardware?

On Tue, 2009-03-10 at 20:27 +0000, Robert wrote:

> This really needs to be made a higher priority. After the latest xorg
> updates on Intrepid, Firefox is crashing for several minutes at as time.
> It's become unusable.
>

[Robert (robrwo)]

On 11/03/09 01:22 Clayton Dillard wrote:
> Not sure what all the fuss is anymore. I'm running Intrepid on an HP
> 8510w notebook that has an Nvidia Quadro FX570M. I Installed the 180.25
> driver from Nvidia and all of my issues with Firefox + Flash went away,
> I still get reliable Suspend/Resume and Hibernate.
>
> Robert, what's your hardware?

Lenovo ThinkPad R61i (though lshw says "R61e")
7650A6G motherboard
Intel 64bit dual T2310
Intel GM965/GL960 Graphics

Need other information?

I've even tried using Gnash instead of Adobe Flash, or just disabling flash
altogether. I still have the same problems.

[Vseerror (vseerror)]

Do you see this problem with most recent beta http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html ?

[mnzy (monzone-deactivatedaccount)]

I think i found something.
I got the same problem and read that it goes away when killing the "gnome-settings-deamon".
I did it and it's true, it is gone.
Can somebody confirm this?
Obviously this daemon changes many settings, but maybe it's a hint!

[mnzy (monzone-deactivatedaccount)]

I gotta add:
it helps to speed up my whole system.
For example, maximizing something from the tray like XChat always took a while and now it is up immediately.
Of course the system looks a bit ugly now. Why is that? What stopped that it looks like this now?
(Sorry, I'm a beginner at this)

[another_sam (anothersam)]

mnzy please tell us which graphics card and which graphics driver does
your system have.

more people should confirm this effect with gnome-settings-daemon. if
that were the case:

I think mnzy comments are quite interesting. we would have that
gnome-settings-daemon is currently a thing that offers a small
aesthetic improvement at the expense of damaging noticeably the
responsiveness of the whole GUI.

I think we should not think about these cases in terms of "is users
fault; their systems are ancient" because this is the windows vista's
approach to computer resources and as we all know, this approach
fails.

Finally, I think gnome-settings-daemon should stop doing (or doing
much faster) 20% of the things that causes 80% of this noticeable
performance drop. (say 20/80, say 10/90 or whatever).

Well, I'm saying all this mainly because I have the same recurring
feeling: few days after ubuntu installations, my excitation about new
features drives away and then I begin to notice that gnome is (still)
too slow, and the more I use it the more I notice it.

On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 10:55 PM, mnzy <email address hidden> wrote:
> I gotta add:
> it helps to speed up my whole system.
> For example, maximizing something from the tray like XChat always took a while and now it is up immediately.
> Of course the system looks a bit ugly now. Why is that? What stopped that it looks like this now?
> (Sorry, I'm a beginner at this)
>
> --
> Firefox causes massive Xorg CPU usage
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/38131
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
>

--
"Make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE
capabilities."
    Bill Gates, 1998.

[Conan (richard-connon)]

The gnome-settings-daemon problem is not the main issue at stake here as it doesn't fix the problem for me.

The main problem here is not one that only affects older computers. When searching for something which returns a lot of results on launchpad (like, ironically, "Xorg CPU") my firefox slows down to an unusable state and Xorg uses 100% of one processor core. This is on a 3.86 GHz core 2 quad with 4GiB of DDR2 942! If that system can't run a single tab in firefox then there is a SERIOUS bug here!

There is a possibility that this is made worse by my peculiar X setup, using two Nvidia GPUs with the proprietary driver with four monitors and Xinerama.

(running up to date jaunty beta)

[Robert (robrwo)]

On 28/03/09 11:49 Conan wrote:
> The gnome-settings-daemon problem is not the main issue at stake here as
> it doesn't fix the problem for me.

I can confirm this as well.

> The main problem here is not one that only affects older computers. ...
> my firefox slows down to an unusable state and Xorg uses 100% of one
> processor core. This is on a 3.86 GHz core 2 quad with 4GiB of DDR2 942!...

I have a dual core machine as well.

> There is a possibility that this is made worse by my peculiar X setup,
> using two Nvidia GPUs with the proprietary driver with four monitors and
> Xinerama.

I'm running a single Intel GPU.

 From one of the FF bug lists, it was suggested that I run the latest alpha
of 3.1 to see if this still occurs. Since they don't have nightly builds
for x64 on Linux, I am unable to do this. But others may want to try and
see if that fixes the problem.

[Robert (robrwo)]

I have recently tried the Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 binary from
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html - so far the
problem has not recurred. (However, I am using a 32-bit build on a
64-bit machine, and some of the plugins such as Flash are disabled.)

Is there a 64-bit version of that version of Firefox in Intrepid
backports or developer repositories that people could try?

[Conan (richard-connon)]

Seems to be a build of Firefox 3.1b3 in this ppa:
https://launchpad.net/~fta/+archive/ppa
I'm going to install and test it now.

[Conan (richard-connon)]

Can confirm that I still get the same effects with the latest firefox-3.5 package in that ppa.
Note: firefox 3.1 was renamed to firefox 3.5

It's worth noting that there is also a Firefox 3.1b3 build in the ubuntu jaunty repos.

[Conan (richard-connon)]

And I also get the same effects with the Firefox 3.1b3 build from http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html
(sorry these last three posts should probably have been consolidated into one.

[Conan (richard-connon)]

Ok... oddly enough adding
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
to all my Device sections in xorg.conf seems to fix this (at least for launchpad as a testcase)

[Jruderman (jruderman)]

Talkback is totally gone now.

[actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666)]

Have you tried closing all firefoxes then run:

mv ~/.mozilla ~/.mozilla_old

Then rerunning firefox?

Fixes a world of things.

[Robert (robrwo)]

Didn't work when I last tried it. I've gotten so fed up with the
problem that I switched to using 3.5, which does not have that
problem.

On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 2:19 PM, actionparsnip
<email address hidden> wrote:
> Have you tried closing all firefoxes then run:
>
> mv ~/.mozilla ~/.mozilla_old
>
> Then rerunning firefox?
>
> Fixes a world of things.
>
> --
> Firefox causes massive Xorg CPU usage
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/38131
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[Neil Broomfield (neil-broomfield)]

I’ve noticed a similar problem, but under slightly different circumstances, everything runs fine (Firefox, videos etc.) and typically the Xorg process is always less that 10%.

My problem occurs when a seconds user logs on, for example the screen saved comes on, my gf clicks “switch user”/“change user” or whatever its called, she logs in and the CPU usage of Xorg process shoots through the roof, especially when using Firefox.

My setup is as below:

OS: Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic)
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (Venice/San Diago Core)
Memory: 2GB PC3200 Corsair
Video Card: ATI X1800 (R520)
Driver: Open Source radeon (NOT radeonhd)

I’ve tinkered with some of the Xorg.conf settings, and if I set the AccelMethod to the older XAA mode instead of EXA, the problem doesn’t exhibit itself. Unfortunately I cannot play videos using XAA mode.

I’m guessing it’s a problem with the open source radeon driver and EXA Accel method (in my case at least).

[Neil Broomfield (neil-broomfield)]

A bit more background info for anyone who’s interested:

After more digging there seems to be a number of bug call specifically relating to the issue with multiple users that I’m experiencing, some of the threads suggest it’s an issue with the first session locking the DRI/DRM and as such when a seconds user logs in they cannot access the DRM and hence they drop back to software rendering. One thread suggests that “drm multi-master” support was required to successfully allow multiple users to access the DRM.

Anyway I decided to turn on Kernel Mode Setting and this seams to have allow both uses to access DRM according to glxinfo and X logs and GDM logs. Unfortunately this presents further issues, one is the fact that the Mode lines aren’t detected correctly and I’ve lost a number of resolutions settings that were available under X control (not a huge issue, but slightly annoying). The other is that Xorg now uses high CPU for a single user or multiple users, especially noticeable under Firefox (3.5). Playing videos however seems fine.

I’ve added ‘Option "RenderAccel" "true"’ and ‘Option "AccelMethod" "exa"’ to my xorg.conf, same problem.

[Vseerror (vseerror)]

Robert wrote in comment #12)
> I confirm this bug for Ubuntu Hardy and Fedora 9.

FTR, reporter email address is dead

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

Sorry but Firefox-3.0 has reached EOL and will not receive updates anymore. Can you please confirm if this still happens on Firefox-3.5
Upstream bug report needs to be updated to confirmed if someone can do that.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

3.0.18 has been decided for Feb.

[itsjustarumour (itsjustarumour-gmail-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

I've had this problem with xorg as long as I have been using Ubuntu (4 years).
Currently getting this problem on Lucid 10.04 Alpha3 with NVidia 195.36.03 driver.
When using a "slow" internet connection - which is 95% of the time for me as I use a Huawei E172 USB modem - xorg "eats" processor cycles, regularly going anywhere between 60-90% of CPU when I'm browsing the web with Firefox v3.6.

[Telugucharan (telugucharan)]

executed test case no.4555 and was abble to reproduce so i have chaged the status as reopen

[Telugucharan (telugucharan)]

executed test case no.4555 already reopened so skip

[Michele Roviello (micheleroviello)]

Same issue on Ubuntu lucid 10.04: in some pages, like this page, firefox become extremely slow and the Xorg process eats a lot of CPU. It doesn't happens with Google Chrome.

[Vseerror (vseerror)]

(In reply to comment #16)
> executed test case no.4555 already reopened so skip

charan, was that done using trunk build??

[aslam karachiwala (akwala)]

Confirming that this issue occurs on Ubuntu 10.10 amd64, w/ Firefox/Namoroka 3.6.14pre.

[Sebastian Wiesinger (sebastianw)]

I have the same problem with Ubuntu 10.10 i386 and Firefox 4.0b7

[Owen B (operryb1)]

Same issue. Firefox 3.6.12 Ubuntu 10.10 64 bit.

[Mozilla-bugzilla-tracker (mozilla-bugzilla-tracker)]

Hello,

this bug still exists with Firefox 4.0 Beta7 running on Ubuntu Maverick 10.10. The XOrg process is using >50% CPU as long as firefox is running (even when the window is in the background and not used)

[Shaver (shaver)]

What is the XOrg process doing? Can you get a profile, please?

[Mozilla-bugzilla-tracker (mozilla-bugzilla-tracker)]

Can you tell me how? I can get one on monday as the only system where this happens is my laptop at work.

[daniferi (daniferi)]

Same problem for me. It seems when firefox is running and I opening new tabs or I making some window-operating (minimize, maximize) the firefox and xorg eat my cpu for a sec. Cpu usage goes up to 90-95% and everything are stopped for a moment. It is not funny when music breaks like on old turntables Now I using opera and there is no problem. With 10 opened tabs i can do anything without extreme cpu usage.

System: Ubuntu 10.04 32bit
VGA: ATI Radeon HD 3650 (Catalyst 10.11)
Browser: Firefox 3.6.13

Some additional info: I changed my VGA in last few days and the previous card was an Nvidia Geforce 7600GS and this problem has started now. It may be some fglrx-firefox-xorg incompatibility or I was just lucky before vga-change?

[Mozilla-bugzilla-tracker (mozilla-bugzilla-tracker)]

I'm at work now, so if you can tell me what you need exactly and how to get a XOrg profile I could do that.

[Steve Payne (c-launchpad-iamsrp-com)]

I started to notice this recently with this advent of Google's fancy new images search. As one scrolls down the page and more images are pulled in the Xorg CPU usage pegs to a core. After you get to the bottom scrolling back and forth seems fine.

My hypothesis (well, more of a wild stab in the dark really since I know very little about X) is that firefox is asking for various bitmap stuff from the X-server and this is the cause of the badness.

FTR I also have an NVidia card (GeForce 8800) and this driver (from the logs):

[ 218.696] (II) NOUVEAU driver Date: Thu Aug 5 00:40:40 2010 +0200
[ 218.696] (II) NOUVEAU driver for NVIDIA chipset families :
[ 218.696] RIVA TNT (NV04)
[ 218.696] RIVA TNT2 (NV05)
[ 218.696] GeForce 256 (NV10)
[ 218.696] GeForce 2 (NV11, NV15)
[ 218.696] GeForce 4MX (NV17, NV18)
[ 218.696] GeForce 3 (NV20)
[ 218.696] GeForce 4Ti (NV25, NV28)
[ 218.696] GeForce FX (NV3x)
[ 218.696] GeForce 6 (NV4x)
[ 218.696] GeForce 7 (G7x)
[ 218.696] GeForce 8 (G8x)
[ 218.696] (II) NOUVEAU driver Date: Thu Aug 5 00:40:40 2010 +0200
[ 218.696] (II) NOUVEAU driver for NVIDIA chipset families :
[ 218.696] RIVA TNT (NV04)
[ 218.696] RIVA TNT2 (NV05)
[ 218.696] GeForce 256 (NV10)
[ 218.696] GeForce 2 (NV11, NV15)
[ 218.696] GeForce 4MX (NV17, NV18)
[ 218.696] GeForce 3 (NV20)
[ 218.696] GeForce 4Ti (NV25, NV28)
[ 218.696] GeForce FX (NV3x)
[ 218.696] GeForce 6 (NV4x)
[ 218.696] GeForce 7 (G7x)
[ 218.696] GeForce 8 (G8x)

[Owen Tuz (owentuz)]

I can confirm this in the recent release of Firefox 4. As Steve mentioned, it's easily reproducible simply by performing a Google Image search. This causes high CPU usage from the X server and on my computer at least, the display temporarily freezes.

I'm running Arch Linux, with an Nvidia 8200M (notebook) video card. If I can help by providing more information, please just ask. This has basically made Firefox unusable for me (so I'm posting from Chromium).

[stripTM (striptm)]

With Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0 in Ubuntu 10.10. / gnome desktop Tested with Graphics acceleration on / off

This page http://eventos.mozilla-hispano.org/1/fiesta-firefox-4-madrid/tweets/ cause Xorg 100% and the system freeze.

Same in chromium, show perfect, the animation looks smooth and Xorg 3% / 13%

[stripTM (striptm)]

The problem has been solved by updating the drivers of the nvidia graphic card (before I had the 173 version).

The problem can be seen in old graphic cards, for example GeForce FX 5200 in which the 173 version is the last version provided.

[Bjacob (bjacob)]

The tar.gz file attached here is corrupted:

$ tar xfzv Downloads/bbscreenshot.tar.gz
tmp/bbsample
tar: tmp/bbsample: Cannot open: Not a directory

The testcase link from comment 6 is dead now.

comment 23 says that at least comment 22 can be ignored.

I think this bug should be considered incomplete at this point.

[Dothebart-q (dothebart-q)]

xymon / hobbitmon is the followoup project of big brother.
http://www.xymon.com/xymon/
you can publicaly acess the site, and the behaviour still is there with most recent iceweasels and current wheezy X11.

[Daniele Dellafiore (ildella)]

Hi. I am affected by something like this, it happens all the time when I use Whatsapp Web http://web.whatsapp.com

[Daniele Dellafiore (ildella)]

I am affected by this on Ubuntu 15.10 and Firefox 44 every time I user http://web.whatsapp.com

[Alexander Jahn (jahn-alexander)]

Same for me. I am affected by something like this, it happens all the time when I use Whatsapp Web http://web.whatsapp.com

[Daniele Dellafiore (ildella)]

I can be more specific. On web.whatsapp.com happens only when I use either
1. search
2. attach file

on first start is ok, so is if i reload the page, until I use one of those two functions.

[7-stevet (7-stevet)]

I can be very specific. This has been a problem for me for a bit over a year now. I am currently running SUSE Leap 42.1 w/ FF 48.0.1. I had been running 13.2. I have been running a 4 core 3.? GHz CPU (AMD) for the whole time, having added a primary SSD for swap (14GB). I also have 8GB RAM.

I have multiple FF windows open, pointing to various locations (2-16 tabs per window). Linkedin (which has its own problems). My gateway server (which I can config via web browser), etc. Flash causes me to have problems immediately, and so I have flash disabled.

When FF finally slows down to where I can't type a message such as this, I Kill it, and restart it, only touching the pages I need immediately.

Eventually it will slow to a crawl again. Right now it is using (per top) 106% of the system. If it were using 390%, it would be using all 4 cores and nothing would respond. But as long as FF is not using more than 2 cores, all other windows for other applications will respond nearly immediately.

I've also noticed that FF appears to have a memory leak. Right now top is showing 5902668 for Virt and slowly climbing.

[Vseerror (vseerror)]

Comment on attachment 216118
tar file with the html page saved as, with the icons and stuff.produces same effect as original page.

obsolete per comment 24

[Vseerror (vseerror)]

(In reply to Sebastian Wiesinger from comment #20)
> Can you tell me how? I can get one on monday as the only system where this
> happens is my laptop at work.

Anyone seeing this problem can create a profile ... see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Performance/Profiling_with_the_Built-in_Profiler

[Mozilla-bugzilla-tracker (mozilla-bugzilla-tracker)]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk, NI for questions) from comment #31)
> (In reply to Sebastian Wiesinger from comment #20)
> > Can you tell me how? I can get one on monday as the only system where this
> > happens is my laptop at work.
>
> Anyone seeing this problem can create a profile ... see
> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Performance/
> Profiling_with_the_Built-in_Profiler

That was 7 YEARS ago! That laptop isn't even existing anymore.

[Dothebart-q (dothebart-q)]

still here with FF45.9.0, debian stretch, i3wm and now the page www.xymon.com

C'mon guys, this bug isn't yet allowed to drive a car by age, its way to early to solve it.

[Vseerror (vseerror)]

(In reply to Wilfried Goesgens from comment #33)
> still here with FF45.9.0, debian stretch, i3wm and now the page www.xymon.com
>
> C'mon guys, this bug isn't yet allowed to drive a car by age, its way to
> early to solve it.

Age isn't particularly helpful . - but a profile would be, and really help.